A One-Sided Report
By Fr Shay Cullen
Columban Father Shay Cullen of PREDA, www.preda.org, ordained in 1969, has been working in Olongapo for many years now with children and women who have been sexually abused. His weekly Reflections are published in newspapers and magazines in a number of countries and appear each week in www.misyononline.com/misyonforum under Father Cullen’s Corner. Your comments there will be most welcome. On 13 September he received the International Irish Person of the Year Award in Dublin in a nationally televised ceremony which each year since 1975 celebrates ‘Irish talent, bravery and fortitude’.
Fr Shay Cullen is known in Olongapo and throughout the world for his work with children and his attempts with his team of lay leaders to rehabilitate them after their horrific experience of being abused. Children have become targets of pedophiles and drug pushers and in recent years have, even at the tender age of nine, been forced into armies in Africa or as couriers in various ways. As a result Fr Shay himself has become a target by those people whose nests he has disturbed. Here he shares with us his vocation story.